The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (55 page)

So down with it we went, crossing several other larger corridors, and at each finding the arrow, still pointing the way we were going. Conrad’s thin beam seemed almost lost in that dense blackness, and nameless forebodings and instinctive fears haunted me as we plunged deeper and deeper into the heart of that accursed hill. Suddenly the tunnel ended abruptly in a narrow stair that led down and vanished in the darkness. An involuntary shudder shook me as I looked down those carven steps. What unholy feet had padded them in forgotten ages? Then we saw something else–a small chamber opening onto the tunnel, just at the head of the stair. And as Conrad flashed his light into it, an involuntary exclamation burst from my lips. There was no occupant, but plenty of evidence of recent occupation. We entered and stood following the play of the thin finger of light.

That the chamber had been furnished for human occupancy was not so astonishing, in the light of our previous discoveries, but we stood aghast at the condition of the contents. A camp cot lay on its side, broken, the blankets strewn over the rocky floor in ragged strips. Books and magazines were torn to bits and scattered aimlessly about, cans of food lay carelessly about, battered and bent, some burst and the contents spilled. A lamp lay smashed on the floor.

“A hideout for somebody,” said Conrad. “And I’ll stake my head it’s Jonas Kiles. But what a chaos!

Look at those cans, apparently burst open by having been struck against the rock floor–and those blankets, torn in strips, as a man might rip a piece of paper. Good God, O’Donnel, no human being could work such havoc!”

“A madman might,” I muttered. “What’s that?”

Conrad had stopped and picked up a notebook. He held it up to his light.

“Badly torn,” he grunted. “But here’s luck, anyway. It’s Jonas Kiles’ diary! I know his handwriting.

Look, this last page is intact, and it’s dated today! Positive proof that he’s alive, were other proof lacking.”

“But where is he?” I whispered, looking fearfully about. “And why all this devastation?”

“The only thing I can think of,” said Conrad, “is that the man was at least partly sane when he entered these caverns, but has since become insane. We’d best be alert–if he is mad, it’s altogether possible that he might attack us in the dark.”

“I’ve thought of that,” I growled with an involuntary shudder. “It’s a pretty thought–a madman lurking in these hellish black tunnels to spring on our backs. Go ahead–read the diary while I keep an eye on the door.”

“I’ll read the last entry,” said Conrad. “Perhaps it will throw some light on the subject.”

And focussing the light on the cramped scrawl, he read: “All is now in readiness for my grand coup.

Tonight I leave this retreat forever, nor will I be sorry, for the eternal darkness and silence are beginning to shake even my iron nerves. I am becoming imaginative. Even as I write, I seem to hear stealthy sounds, as of things creeping up from below, although I have not seen so much as a bat or a snake in these tunnels. But tomorrow I will have taken up my abode in the fine house of my accursed brother.

While he–and it is a jest so rare I regret that I can not share it with someone–he will take my place in the cold darkness–darker and colder than even these dark tunnels.

“I must write, if I can not speak of it, for I am thrilled by my own cleverness. What diabolical cunning is mine! With what devilish craft have I plotted and prepared! Not the least was the way in which, before my ‘death’–ha! ha! ha! if the fools only knew–I worked on my brother’s superstitions–dropping hints and letting fall cryptic remarks. He always looked on me as a tool of the Evil One. Before my final ‘illness’ he trembled on the verge of belief that I had become supernatural or infernal. Then on my ‘death-bed’ when I poured my full fury upon him, his fright was genuine. I know that he is fully convinced that I am a vampire. Well do I know my brother. I am as certain as if I saw him, that he fled his home and prepared a stake to drive through my heart. But he will not make a move until he is sure that what he suspects is true.

“This assurance I will lend him. Tonight I will appear at his window. I will appear and vanish. I do not want to kill him with fright, because then my plans would be set at naught. I know that when he recovers from his first fright, he will come to my tomb to destroy me with his stake. And when he is safely in the tomb, I will kill him. I will change garments with him–lay him safely in the tomb, in the open coffin–and steal back to his fine house. We resemble each other enough, so that, with my knowledge of his ways and mannerisms, I can mimic him to perfection. Besides, who would ever suspect? It is too bizarre–too utterly fantastic. I will take up his life where he left off. People may wonder at the change in Job Kiles, but it will go no further than wondering. I will live and die in my brother’s shoes, and when the real death comes to me–may it be long deferred!–I will lie in state in the old Kiles vaults, with the name of Job Kiles on my headstone, while the real Job sleeps unguessed in the old tomb on Pirate Hill! Oh, it is a rare, rare jest!

“I wonder how old Jacob Kiles discovered these subterranean ways. He did not construct them. They were carved out of dim caverns and solid rock by the hands of forgotten men–how long ago I dare not venture a conjecture. While hiding here, waiting for the time to be ripe, I have amused myself by exploring them. I have found that they are far more extensive than I had suspected. The hills must be honeycombed with them, and they sink into the earth to an incredible depth, tier below tier, like the stories of a building, each tier connected with the one below by a single stairway. Old Jacob Kiles must have used these tunnels, at least those of the upper tier, for the storing of plunder and contraband. He built the tomb to mask his real activities, and of course, cut the secret entrance and hung the door-stone on the pivot. He must have discovered the burrows by means of the hidden entrance at Smuggler’s Point.

The old door he constructed there was a mere mass of rotting splinters and rusty metal when I found it.

As no one ever discovered it, after him, it is not likely anyone will find the new door I built with my own hands, to replace the old one. Still, I will take the proper precautions in due time.

“I have wondered much as to the identity of the race which must once have inhabited these labyrinths. I have found no bones or skulls, though I have discovered, in the upper tier, curiously hardened copper implements. On the next few stories I found stone implements, down to the tenth tier, where they disappeared. Also, on the topmost tier I found portions of walls decorated with paintings, greatly faded, but evidencing undoubted skill. These picture-paintings I found on all the tiers down to, and including, the fifth, though each tier’s decorations were cruder than those of the one above, until the last paintings were mere meaningless daubs, such as an ape might make with a paintbrush. Also, the stone implements were much cruder on the lower levels, as was the workmanship of the roofs, stairs, doorways, etc. One gets a fantastic impression of an emprisoned race burrowing deeper and deeper into the black earth, century by century, and losing more and more of their human attributes as they sank to each new level.

“The fifteenth tier is without rhyme or reason, the tunnels running aimlessly, without apparent plan–so striking a contrast to the top-most tier, which is a triumph of primitive architecture, that it is difficult to believe them to have been constructed by the same race. Many centuries must have elapsed between the building of the two tiers, and the builders must have become greatly degraded. But the fifteenth tier is not the end of these mysterious burrows.

“The doorway opening on the single stairway at the bottom of the lowest tier was blocked by stones which had fallen from the roof–probably hundreds of years ago, before old Captain Jacob discovered the tunnels. Prompted by curiosity, I cleared away the debris, in spite of the tax it was on my strength, and opened a hole in the heap this very day, although I did not have time to explore what lay beneath.

Indeed, I doubt if I could do so, for my light showed me, not the usual series of stone stairs, but a steep smooth shaft, leading down into the blackness. An ape or a serpent might pass up and down it, but not a human being. Into what unthinkable pits it leads, I do not care to even try to guess. For some reason, the realization that the fifteenth tier was not the ultimate boundary of the labyrinths was a shock. The sight of the unstepped shaft gave me a strangely creepy feeling, and led me to fantastic conjectures regarding the ultimate fate of the race which once lived in these hills. I had supposed the diggers, sinking lower and lower in the scale of life, had become extinct in the lower tiers, although I had not found any remains to justify my theories. The lower tiers do not lie in almost solid rock as do those nearer the surface. They are cut into black earth and a very soft sort of stone, and were apparently scooped out with the most primitive utensils; they even appear in places to have been dug out with fingers and nails. It might be the burrowings of animals, except for the evident attempt to imitate the more orderly systems above. But below the fifteenth tier, as I could see, even by my superficial investigations from above, all mimicry ceases; the diggings below the fifteenth tier are mad and brutish pits, and to what blasphemous depths they descend, I have no wish to know.

“I am haunted by fantastic speculations as to the identity of the race which literally sunk into the earth and disappeared in its black depths, so long ago. A legend persisted among Indians of this vicinity that many centuries before the coming of the white men, their ancestors drove a strange alien race into the caverns of Dagoth Hills, and sealed them up to perish. That they did not perish, but survived somehow for at least several centuries, is evident. Who they were, whence they came, what was their ultimate fate, will never be known. Anthropologists might glean some evidence from the paintings on the upper tier, but I do not intend that anyone shall ever know about these burrows. Some of these dim pictures depict unmistakable Indians, at war with men evidently of the same race as the artists. These models, I should venture to say, resembled the Caucasian type rather than the Indian.

“But the time approaches for my call on my beloved brother. I will go forth by the door in Smuggler’s Point, and return the same way. I will reach the tomb before my brother, however quickly he comes–as come I know he will. Then when the deed is done, I will go forth from the tomb, and no man shall ever set foot in these corridors again. For I shall see that the tomb is never opened, and a convenient dynamite-blast shall shake down enough rocks from the cliffs above to effectually seal the door in Smuggler’s Point forever.”

Conrad slipped the notebook into his pocket.

“Mad or sane,” he said grimly, “Jonas Kiles is a proper devil. I am not greatly surprised, but I am slightly shocked. What a hellish plot! But he erred in one thing: he apparently took it for granted that Job would come to the tomb alone. The fact that he did not was sufficient to upset his calculations.”

“Ultimately,” I answered. “Yet inasfar as Job is concerned, Jonas has succeeded in his fiendish plan–he managed to kill his brother somehow. Evidently he was in the tomb when Job entered. He frightened him to death somehow, then, evidently realizing our presence, slipped away through the secret door.”

Conrad shook his head. A growing nervousness had made itself evident in his manner as he had progressed with the reading of the diary. From time to time he had paused and lifted his head in a listening attitude.

“O’Donnel, I do not believe that it was Jonas that Job saw in the coffin. I have changed my opinion somewhat. An evil human mind was first at the back of all this, but some of the aspects of this business I can not attribute to humanity.

“That cry we heard at the Point–the condition of this room–the absence of Jonas–all indicate something even darker and more sinister than Jonas Kiles’ murder plot.”

“What do you mean?” I asked uneasily.

“Suppose that the race which dug these tunnels
did not perish!
” he whispered. “Suppose their descendants still dwell in some state of abnormal existence in the black pits below the tiers of corridors!

Jonas mentions in his notes that he thought to hear stealthy sounds, as of things creeping up from
below!
”

“But he lived in these tunnels for a week,” I expostulated.

“You forget that the shaft leading to the pits was blocked up until today, when he cleared away the rocks. O’Donnel, I believe that the lower pits
are
inhabited, that the creatures have found their way up into these tunnels, and that it was the sight of one of them, sleeping in the coffin, which killed Job Kiles!”

“But this is utter madness!” I exclaimed.

“Yet these tunnels were inhabited in times past, and according to what we have read, the inhabitants must have sunk to an incredibly low level of life. What proof have we that their descendants have not lived on in the horrible black pits which Jonas saw below the lower tier? Listen!”

He had snapped off his light, and we had been standing in the darkness for some minutes. Somewhere I heard a faint sliding, scrambling noise. Stealthily we stole into the tunnel.

“It is Jonas Kiles!” I whispered, but an icy sensation stole up and down my spine.

“Then he has been hiding below,” muttered Conrad. “The sounds come from the stairs–as of something creeping up from below. I dare not flash the light–if he is armed it might draw his fire.”

I wondered why Conrad, iron-nerved in the presence of human enemies, should be trembling like a leaf. I wondered why cold trickles of nameless horror should trace their way along my spine. And then I was electrified. Somewhat back up the tunnel, in the direction from which we had come, I heard another soft repellent sound. And at that instant Conrad’s fingers sunk like steel into my arm. In the murky darkness below us, two yellow oblique sparks suddenly glittered.

“My God!” came Conrad’s shocked whisper.
“That’s not Jonas Kiles!”